Deontic epistemic stit logic distinguishing modes of mens rea (Q545173): Difference between revisions

The author explores the ability of a stit-style logic of action (with a connective for `next state' for locating effects of current action) supplemented by alethic, epistemic, and deontic modal operators, to express different modes of unlawfulness of an action. North American law, for example, not only distinguishes between the involuntary and voluntary performance of an action but also, in the latter case, between doing it negligently, recklessly, knowingly, and purposefully. All of these except the last (which involves the notion of intention) are examined from the point of view of the paper's `multi-modal-stit' framework, and formal representations are proposed. Reflecting on the work done, the author suggests that the formal apparatus can take us further than the traditional legal distinctions, in much the same way as temporal logics can define tenses absent from familiar natural languages. For example, in between `acting knowingly' and `acting recklessly', we may consider a formally definable category of `knowingly risking'. He also suggests, although unfortunately without specific examples, that some of the putative counterexamples to well-known principles of deontic logic may be due to the hidden presence of other operators, such as those considered in the paper, modifying the effect of the purely deontic ones.